film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Category: REVIEWS

Here is where you would find our film reviews on BRWC.  We look at on trailers, shorts, indies and mainstream.  We love movies!

  • Ultraviolence: LFF Review

    Ultraviolence: LFF Review

    It’s been almost twenty years since Ken Fero’s highly controversial documentary Injustice was released (a film that was banned from television and effectively banished Fero from the mainstream), but he’s now returned with another, equally shocking and revealing film that picks up right where he left off. With Ultraviolence, Fero gives us yet more evidence of prisoners who died under ridiculous circumstances while in police custody.

    Fero, who narrates much of the film himself with the help of Cathy Tysoe, frames the film as a letter to his son; a document to be looked back on, of a time that he hopes will one day pass. He tells various stories of such incidents one-by-one, referring to them as ‘memories’, accompanied with CCTV footage and interviews with family members. It’s a bleak and uncomfortable watch, as it should be.

    Ultraviolence opens with the ‘memory’ of Christopher Adler, who was left to die on the floor of a police station entrance while several officers belittled and mocked his condition, claiming he was ‘faking it’. The footage is harrowing, to say the very least, and it’s the start of things to come, as we’re soon shown film of Paul Coker lying almost naked in his prison cell as he dies, while officers on the other side of the door joke about it together. Coker isn’t seen by a doctor until almost thirty minutes after he dies. 

    Allowing the footage to play out like this is a simple but very clever technique, letting the truth speak for itself without the need for cinematic extravagance. Fero isn’t making any allegations here because he simply doesn’t need to; the truth is right there. His film is a cry for justice; nothing more, nothing less, and he goes on to look at several other cases, including his old classmate Brian Douglas, who died from a fractured skull, and Jean Charles De Menezes, who was shot seven times in the head while trying to catch a tube, each story as shocking as the last. 

    Fero only strays from his bare knuckles approach during fleeting moments of animation, which he uses to illustrate how these men came to be in custody in the first place. It’s masterfully done, although the basic style of the rest of the picture does become a problem. It’s an understandable approach, but it doesn’t necessarily always work, often coming across quite jarring and confusing the tone he’s going for. 

    While Ultraviolence is a work brimming with anger, the heart of the stories comes from the familial interviews, which are compassionately observed by Fero. The victim’s families are articulate, intelligent, and every bit as frustrated as you’d expect. Their determination is admirable, as we follow them through meetings, campaigns and on various marches. The film would’ve been a far stranger experience had it not been for their inclusion; the interviews serve to brilliantly humanise the people we sadly watch dying before our very eyes. 

    Fero often comes across as something of a pessimist. He notes that outrage has only ever been temporary, cleverly comparing it to the footage of Vietnamese children suffering from the effects of Napalm in the seventies. Sure, people were angry at the time, but it never stopped the use of phosphorus gas in Iraq years later. They knew it was wrong, but they did it anyway, the outrage soon forgotten. Fero posits that the same has long been true of police brutality such as this. 

    But he’s truthfully something of an optimist, dreaming of a revolution and confident in future generations. He believes he’s doing the right thing to get through to people, noting that ‘endless brutality requires endless resistance’, and while this is mostly a brutal work that is unashamedly confrontational, he really believes things can change. 

    Ultraviolence is another startling exposé of police brutality that’ll stick with any kind-hearted individual watching, but it’s not just a record of the incidents themselves. Rather, it’s a story about the ongoing fight for justice, and the importance of holding guilty people to account. There are clear issues with its style, which all too often distracts from the content at hand and completely messes with the tone, but for the most part the stories themselves are enough to get the message across. Fero’s approach is sincere and personal, and while his film may be one of the most painful you’ll ever sit through, it’s one that simply must be watched. 

  • Summer Of 85: The BRWC Review

    Summer Of 85: The BRWC Review

    By John Battiston.

    The jarring transition from the broodingly dour opening of Summer of 85 into the thick of its titular milieu is only the first of the film’s many overtly purposeful choices. By smash-cutting from the aftermath of sixteen-year-old Alex’s (Félix Lefebvre) ostensible arrest — overlaid with aloof, resigned narration and capped by a baggy-eyed fourth-wall break — to an airy synthpop track and a sun-dappled beachscape, writer-director François Ozon presents a barefaced harbinger of the film’s juggling act between hypnagogic teen romance and sullen coming-of-age tragedy.

    From there, Alex’s arrest and the lead-up to any potential disciplinary action act as a framing device for the preceding six weeks, when he develops an intense summer romance with eighteen-year-old fishing-shop operator David (Benjamin Voisin). Their meet-cute, in which David swoops in to the rescue after Alex’s sailboat capsizes off the coast of Normandy, plays out beneath an obsidian thunderstorm, yet another in a series of portents that remind us — along with the peppered-in fast-forwards to Alex’s contemplation of events we have yet to witness — that imminent doom and gloom await.

    As the main narrative continues, Alex and David begin to not-so-gradually integrate into each other’s lives, working together in the fishing shop by day, hitting the boardwalk and discotheques by night. Friendly ribbing quickly turn into longing glances, which soon give way to behind-closed-doors trysts. But while Alex’s borderline iambic narration illuminates just how deep his infatuation with his newfound paramour runs, David’s noncommittal, laissez-faire approach to romance becomes increasingly evident, telegraphing an inevitable schism. And judging by the future events we’ve been clued in on, that schism can’t end up being pretty.

    While Summer of 85 sets itself up as a blend of Call Me by Your Name and The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ozon really only succeeds at evoking the dreamy patina and extreme sensuousness of the former, while his attempts to inject tension or mystery go frustratingly unrealized. The chemistry between Lefebvre and Voisin is too palpable to dismiss as maudlin, surface-level romance, their characters too expertly constructed as congenial foils to one another. In particular, Lefebvre’s embodiment of disillusioned, starry-eyed desire goes beyond the eye-rolling naiveté similar characters invoke, rather earning our fullest sympathy for simply not knowing any better when it comes to the weight of love. (He’s sixteen; why should he?)

    But while Ozon excels at exploring the complications of teen sexuality (as he previously did with Young and Beautiful), the sinister expectations he sets for the latter half of the narrative are such that the culmination is, to say the least, underwhelming. This is not to say the plot itself — adapted from Aidan Chambers’s novel Dance on My Grave — is poorly conceived; rather, Ozon’s sequencing and presentation of that plot as a nonlinear thriller (complete with corny bass rumbles during weightier moments) is tremendously ill-advised. Summer of 85 hinges on an eventual tragedy, to be sure, but both the tragedy itself and the manner in which it occurs cast shadows that neither warrant the ominous foreshadowing that riddles the script nor manage to leave a mark that lasts to the final cut-to-black.

    While gorgeously composed and boasting two excellent performances, Summer of 85 is a tragic romance that simply overplays its hand.

    Summer of 85 – released in cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema 23rd October.

  • Cicada: LFF Review

    Cicada: LFF Review

    Matt Fifer’s feature debut (co-directed with Kieran Mulcare) is a deeply personal one; a semi-autobiographical story about a bisexual man who struggles with intimacy due to a traumatic childhood experience and is forced to confront his past in order to move on from it. In Cicada, Fifer plays Ben, a lonely New Yorker who goes from job to job, fling to fling, and spends his free time regularly getting checked for STDs. His life is fairly empty until he meets Sam (Sheldon D. Brown, who co-wrote the screenplay) at a bookshop and forms an instant connection with him worth building on. 

    After Sam opens up about not coming out to his devout father and being randomly shot by a homophobe a few years prior, Ben finally feels able to discuss his own baggage, having been sexually assaulted as a young boy (set in 2013, this all plays out over the backdrop of the trial of football coach Jerry Sandusky, occasionally overheard on the news). Ben says at one stage, ‘I always thought if I ended up with a man, it would mean I lost.’ But together, Ben and Sam soon find themselves in a strong, healthy relationship, built on mutual trust and respect. 

    At the heart of Cicada is two compelling and passionate central performances. Brown is certainly the most natural in front of camera, but Fifer conveys Ben’s sadness skilfully enough, likely owing to his own relationship with the material, and the two share a natural chemistry that more than sells their affection for one another. 

    Thematically rich, this film not only focuses on homosexuality, childhood trauma and PTSD, but also on the challenges of an interracial relationship. Sam’s discomfort when meeting Ben’s friends for the first time draws a barrier between two men who had previously felt so equal. It’s a story of intersectionality and of otherness, in its many forms, and of finding the courage to own how you feel and work through it. 

    It’s clear that Ben has never really discussed his past before, but he’s encouraged to do so by Sam, and soon seeks out a therapist (awkwardly played by Cobie Smulders), and even opens up to his closest friends and family about it for the very first time. These are two lost souls who really needed a nudge, and their love for one another proves to be enough. 

    It definitely tries too hard in places, commonly turning to evocative montages and slo-mo as a means of conveying emotion, and it undoubtedly has issues with its pacing, but it’s also a film born of such passion and heart that it more than holds your interest. It’s a moving study both of personal identity and of past trauma, and a romantic, honest, personal tale of two men who find solace with each other in their time of need and learn to face their past together. 

  • Redwood Massacre: Annihilation – Review

    Redwood Massacre: Annihilation – Review

    A few years after the events of The Redwood Massacre, Max (Damien Puckler) has become obsessed with them, even influenced by them. So, when he meets Laura (Danielle Harris) and Tom Dempsey (Jon Campling), a family affected by the Redwood Murders, he sees his chance to take them on a hunt to bring the Burlap Sack Killer to justice.

    After a while trekking through the woods to get to their destination, they see the entrance to an underground bunker and without thinking twice, the gang comprising of Laura, Tom and their friends Gus (Gary Kasper) and Jen (Tevy Poe) venture into the bunker to find the killer. Little do they realise that their guide has led them right into his trap.

    Redwood Massacre: Annihilation is the sequel to The Redwood Massacre released in 2014. Following its predecessor also written and directed by David Ryan Keith, Redwood Massacre: Annihilation sets its horror in an enclosed space where the killer picks them off one by one, whereas the original did the same, but with a group of campers.

    However, the familiar settings of the Redwood Massacre movies may be a bit more satisfying if along with its classic tropes, it tried to do anything engaging with the story and characters. Instead Redwood Massacre: Annihilation just does what it feels it needs to do in order to qualify as a horror movie.

    Fans of the original (wherever you are) will be met by the same kind of knowingly cliché horror that the first one provided albeit with a new cast of characters and a new kill list in order to watch them all die in various horrible ways.

    The problem is that newcomers who may not even realise that this is a sequel may not be all that impressed as the characters and plot are put together so lazily that they won’t care about anyone.

    There are some attempts at a bond between the characters which includes a mild flirtation between Gus and Jen, but by the end the audience will just see the movie for what it is and wish they were watching something with more imagination.

  • Shirley: Review

    Shirley: Review

    Shirley is a biopic of dubious intent. It is impeccably made – excellent performances, evocative camerawork and absorbing sound design, but to what end? It presents a fictionalised account of Shirley Jackson – the noted author of The Haunting of Hill House – and depicts not her talent but her supposedly twisted arrogance. It is uninvolving work that says very little about its reimagined subject.

    Inspired no doubt by Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the film contrives a warped psychodrama between Shirley (Elisabeth Moss), her husband Stanley Nyman (Michael Stuhlbarg) and a newlywed couple Rose and Fred Nemser (Odessa Young, Logan Lerman).

    Stanley, a gregarious professor at Bennington College, asks Rose if they could help around the house, offering the couple room and board. They accept, realising the opportunities this presents. The whole thing is a ruse, however, for Shirley and Stanley plan on tormenting the couple, driving a wedge between them as they shame Rose for her ‘shotgun wedding’ and Fred for his ‘derivative’ academic abilities.  

    We see that Jackson has serious issues even before the sick campaign against the Nemsers. An agoraphobic, she is rude, haughty and dysfunctional, with a dash of jealousy to boot. She delights in others’ misfortunes and is visibly excited by opportunities to criticise and ridicule. Her personality goes beyond just bad intent, she is mentally ill, and the film skillfully depicts her maladjustment with extreme close-ups and oppressive diegetic sound – the hum of a light, the chirping of crickets. The score, too, reflects her anxieties, with neurotic piano and plucked strings interspersed with sorrowful choir and fraught double bass.

    Stanley appears to be her opposite: sociable, good humoured and enthusiastic. However, he proves to be every bit as nasty and underhand, lavishing Fred with praise only to crush him with a mocking appraisal of his dissertation. “I am insulted by mediocrity”, he proclaims, exuding a most contemptible arrogance. When he’s not pontificating he is a letch, handsy and kissy with a cross-section of the Bennington campus. Shirley, wallowing in her own filth, is too torpid to care.

    There isn’t much to consider outside of these horrible characters, we certainly see little of Jackson’s talent. This is due, in part, to the inwardness of writing; the depth of an author’s prose does not transfer to the screen like a boxer’s punch or a dancer’s agility. So, like The Shining and Adaptation before it, we see the odd scene of Jackson at her desk, recording her thoughts before they flitter away, but this tells us little about writer’s canon and legacy.

    Indeed, many viewers will leave Shirley with more questions than answers. Are we witnessing fact or fiction here? As someone who knows little of Shirley Jackson, I want to know. The film’s departure from reality, inspired by the non-chronology of Jackson’s texts, is more frustrating than compelling. The Jackson family isn’t happy, either. Laurence Hyman Jackson, Shirley’s son, commented that audiences with no knowledge of his family will “leave thinking my mother was a crazy alcoholic and my father was a mean critic”, adding that the film also failed to portray his mother’s sense of humour. Incidentally, Jackson’s four children are neither featured nor even mentioned in the film, written out of history for some curious reason.

    Again, Shirley is skillfully made. Elisabeth Moss continues her streak of winning performances, while Michael Stulhbarg gives another memorable turn. What results, though, is less than the sum of its parts, with the strange imaginings of Susan Merrel’s novel, on which the script is based, a kind of literary defamation.